One of the inaugural startups from Milwaukee's Global Water Center is transitioning to California, and taking local talent along with it.

MeterHero began as H2OScore, conceived by Marquette University's McGee Young and fleshed out during the first class of the BREW water startup incubator led by the Milwaukee Water Council.

Young, a winner of the Milwaukee Business Journal's 40 Under 40 Award, later pivoted the water-tracking startup to become a tool to monitor homeowners' utility usage. Now, he's pushing it toward a new, incentive-based model, and is in the process of landing additional funding.

But Milwaukee lacks two ingredients crucial to propelling MeterHero forward, Young said: a big-ticket investor and demand for its product.

On the West Coast, however, odds seem better on finding a lead investor, and ongoing pain from the California drought means it will be easier for MeterHero to build a user base, according to Young.

Coming on board at MeterHero and soon joining Young in the Oakland, Calif., area is Rachel Wilberding, previously with the Water Council and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences.

Although she acknowledges it seems counterintuitive, Wilberding sees MeterHero's move out West as a win for Milwaukee's water cluster.

"I look at it a little bit differently because of my previous work at the Water Council," she said. "We spent a lot of time sort of visioning Milwaukee as the Silicon Valley of water, and talked about that a lot. And so I look at our move as sort of flipping that idea on its head; instead of bringing the Silicon Valley concept here, we're taking the Milwaukee concept of that hyper-collaborative style of innovation...back to California."

Wilberding said the Global Water Center is designed to serve as an international water hub, meaning companies use its resources and broaden its network, but may not all be the right fit to locate here in the long-term, a sentiment echoed by Water Council president Dean Amhaus.

For his part, Young said he'll continue to teach in Milwaukee, commuting back and forth from California to lead a Marquette class on environmental politics and sustainability.

"The energy in Milwaukee is wonderful and it's actually a great place for early stage entrepreneurs," he said via email.

Wilberding also wants to keep MeterHero's Milwaukee roots firmly planted, relying in part on local companies to back its new model, which offers cash rebates to consumers who save water.

Young said he first developed a version of the "rebate" idea with H2OScore, where the startup partnered with local businesses to provide gift certificates for water conservation based on how much water had been saved.

MeterHero itself has funded $10,000 in rebates, enough to fully offset its own water footprint.

"That means we will fund - ourselves - a million gallons of savings," he said by email. "We expect to be rebating billions of gallons of savings each year."

Young and Wilberding anticipate companies looking to polish their image around conservation and water usage will join MeterHero in being "net-zero" consumers of water, meaning a company will pay for consumer rebates sufficient to offset its own water usage.

Homeowners (and even apartment dwellers) who track their water usage will receive a penny back for every gallon saved. If a homeowner uses an average 200 gallons a day, for example, and conserves 10 percent, that's 20 cents per day multiplied over the year, totaling almost $75.

"Right now, the way we value water is very low. It's increasing in value for folks who are already seeing resource shortfalls... but for the rest of us, it's not something that we place a high intrinsic value on," she said. "Our hope is that by connecting it a little bit more directly in people's mind with dollars in the bank account, we start to shift the culture to one that values water more intrinsically."

MeterHero isn't announcing its private partners yet, but Wilberding said some Milwaukee companies have already signed on, and both California companies and Midwest firms have shown an interest.

Young is currently seeking real estate in the Oakland area, where Wilberding plans to join him early next year as vice president of sales and marketing. MeterHero's developer will remain in the Milwaukee area, Wilberding said.